“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”
Many years ago I stumbled on this quote by the tragically wheezy 19th century french author Marcel Proust. I can’t tell you what else Proust wrote because I haven’t read a speck of it, but this singular sentence, for me at least, anchors one of the fundamental themes of the human condition. To me it means that only real escape from dissatisfaction lies in literally changing one’s mind and not one’s external circumstances. It’s not a new concept for me or anyone else that makes of hobby of thinking about thinking. In fact, it’s a line of thought I’ve willfully ignored for the last ten or so years, ever since I determined that the desire to reshape one’s thinking and then subsequent inability to do so creates a maddening dissonance that is better set aside. I also harbored a secret fear that physical pleasures would lose their luster if I ever managed to climb above the tumult of material gratification. I’ve always viewed that as carving off the mountaintops of life just so you don’t have to trudge through the valleys.
All of that changed this winter when, for the first time in my life, I began to hook winter steelhead in earnest. I was catching 2-4 fish a day on a river where nobody else was catching anything, and the long hours of wading gave me ample time to reflect on why. So fierce was my obsession with catching these fish, that I forced myself to endure day after day of cold, wet, strenuous, conditions. I fought through intense frustration and ultimately arrived at a rare state of grace that reinforced itself with every trip down the river. What began as me pretending to be focused, careful, calm, and tenacious, ended up with me actually owning those virtues, at least in this narrow context. This newfound ‘instinct’ to fish rewarded me not only with the gratification of day after day of thrilling sport (though I doubt the fish see it that way) but also with a new theory that meaningful personal change has to occur not just on a psychological, but rather a neurological level.
In retrospect it was a long overdue conclusion, considering that I’d been teaching people to roll kayaks for 15 years.
Five days later I struck out on a trip down the Grand Canyon with a few strangers and a few casual aquaintances on a trip that would test this assumption.
Somewhat dispassionately, I observed the objective reality of our 280 mile whitewater trip. Every day we woke up in a beautiful place and took a long time to pack up lots of stuff, only to move westward in big swoops and splashes of dangerous ice cold water. Our trip was a trip fraught with interpersonal conflicts and petty bickering, some of which I had nothing to do with, and some of which I certainly did. What I found most curious was that I seethed with anger during those harmless inconsequential moments, then hours later I’d gleefully toss myself like a rag doll into a fearsome and potentially deadly whitewater environment. That the mind can percieve words as painful and genuine danger as pleasant leads one to conclude that our brains are nothing more than a funhouse of refracting neuro-chemical-feedback loops that manifest themselves in the oddest of ways. The more I considered it the more I became curious about the brain.
I spent the little free time I had during these 3 weeks tying on filthy running shoes and pounding out hard miles on scary trails with my Ipod blaring, the whole time praying that I didn’t get bit by one of the numerous rattlesnakes. After trying to force feed endorphins into my bloodstream, I slowly drained them back out by sipping scotch (and I do mean sipping, this bottle was still over half full at the end of 21 days) and reading a book I’d picked up before leaving home…
Train your Mind, Change your Brain, by Sharon Begley, sounds like a self help book but is actually a careful chronicle of the history of neuroplasticity research. In a nutshell this book tells a story of the body of evidence for adult neuroplasticity, (the ability of the brain not only to rewire large areas of itself, but also to grow new neurons), and the medical establishments longstanding resistance to these proofs. It turns out that the adult human brain CAN be reshaped in striking ways. Most of this research to date has focused on injury or illness, (healing the damaged brain), but the next frontier lies in what is known as above-the-line research (making healthy brains better). As a science writer Sharon smartly ends the book ends here, however, the apt reader is almost led to speculate that someday such research could lay the foundation for transforming our current society of supersmart cave-men into something that might resemble actual civilized people. It’s hard to read this stuff and not conclude the value of meditation in pursuit of a satisfying, balanced life. Personally I’d rather have my toenails pulled out by the Viet-Cong than sit still for any period of time, but if I can train my brain to catch a Steelhead, who knows what might be possible?
In the meantime, life grows on. Spring on the farm is a well of joy that seems not to require any sort of brain-rewiring to appreciate. Evolution has naturally wired us to enjoy touching the earth and nurturing plants, and walking past tiny sprouts every morning is deeply gratifying.
Ginger, as usual is a force of nature, growing our farm to double it’s size every single year, expanding our markets, and adding educational programs that are already successful beyond what we had ever imagined. I work hard, but Gin makes me look like a slacker, and I sometimes wonder if she shouldn’t be studied by science to determine the neurological underpinnings of raw motivation. The reward is a veritable food-explosion for eight months of the year. Healthy food being the underpinnings of a healthy brain, and thus a happy life, it’s a subject that’s constantly on my mind these days. This year we’ve added 2 more acres, 2 more interns, extended our CSA, and added classes to learn how to do everything from beekeeping to orchard management, to how to operate a chainsaw safely, and how to build a passive solar bath-house. (the last two taught by yours truly).
To learn more about our educational programs visit: R-evolution Gardens Home Page and consider signing up for one of my homesteading classes, Ginger is kicking my butt with her enrollments right now and I’m feeling a bit inadequate, tell your friends! (to sign up that is, not that I’m feeling inadequate)
Life on the farm is pretty cool, but before you up and leave the big city to follow in our footsteps I should mention that there are downsides to this lifestyle. As some of you know, our farm is completely off-the-grid, meaning that we produce all our own electricity, heat, and hot water from resources available within about a 300 meter radius. This comes with certain lifestyle changes that some people have difficulty adjusting to. Springtime is especially difficult. With both the micro-hydro and the solar panel pumping electricity and no shunt load to bleed that extra juice off, it only takes a few days for the voltage in our batteries to spike to dangerous levels. It seems like I constantly have to nag people to waste more electricity, a typical conversation might sound like this:
“Listen, I’ve been leaving the lights on in my house and I really need you guys to do the same.”
“It’s hard, I’m just not used to it, I was always taught to turn the lights out, I’m trying OK?”
“You’re a part of this house just like everyone else, you need to try harder, think about using the hot plate more, or turning up the stereo?”
“Fine.”
Similarly, with the copper coils in our chimney pipe now working in conjunction with the solar hot water panels, it’s easy to push the storage tank to boiling and blow the pressure relief valve. We try to solve this by taking more hot showers but sometimes I have to resort to just letting the hot water run out of the tap. I knew that embracing this lifestyle might get weird, I just never guessed how weird. It’s a far cry from the assumptions we had about flickering lightbulbs and lukewarm showers.
Seeing as how this is a Cape Falcon Kayak update, I suppose I ought to talk about work for a minute. Work is going well, my classes fill almost instantly these days, and as usual I’m thrilled that someone with my level of learning disability (apparantly I’m not supposed to call it mental retardation) can secure any form of gainful employment, although gainful might be a bit of a stretch.
In march I had the privledge to teach at an unexpectedly wonderful venue, the Shop People shop in Portland, Oregon, just 90 minutes from my house. It’s too cold to teach in my shop in the winter so I agreed to teach a class at Shop People, but I must admit to feeling like my students might be getting shortchanged by being in the city. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Several of my students came out to the coast to help prep the class and got the standard tour, then we all rallied back to P-town to set up the class in this unusual workspace. Let me elaborate; Shop People is essentially a maze of interlocking rooms beneath an old building right in the heart of inner SE Portland. There are collectively used tools for every sort of metal and woodworking, and occupants pay a flat fee for use of the general space and then a per square foot charge for personal space. The net effect is of a multi-layered subterranean labyrinth, through which circulate all manner of colorful talented characters working on various creative projects at all hours of the day or night. The place is safe, and well managed, but one never gets the feeling of their being an authority figure telling you to watch your p’s and q’s. I found the environment, with it’s opportunities for creative cross-pollination to be highly stimulating. The whole place made me feel like I was twenty years old and somehow “breaking the rules”, and we had a lot of fun embracing this vibe, as though we were sneaking away from our normal lives, even though building boats is my normal life! Portland was my home for many years and I still think Portland is as good as a city can get. I went for runs on the Esplanade, hung out at bookstores, and spent my evenings drinking beer and bullshitting we people around the shop. The week was easy, and fun. I look forward to teaching at shop people next year!
One of my students, Alex W. brought a marvelous little camera called a micro 4/3rds which combines the full size sensor of a DSLR with the body of a point-and-shoot resulting in a compact camera that can suck in an awful lot of illumination and deliver pretty darn nice images even in miserable lighting.
Alex put together a great blog post about the class, (scroll down till you get to it) here:
http://alexwetmore.org
He also also added this awesome SmugMug album that really shows the whole process, thanks Alex, this is really great to have on the site!
Here we are, launching into the muddy Willamette river in downtown Portland with a couple of friends who brought their own boats. It was a blustery day but everyone had fun. Well, everyone but David who got lost and never showed up at the put in, or at least he later said he got lost, Dave is a Canadian and I think he was just sick of all us obnoxious Americans.
Here I am checking out the GORGEOUS disko bay boat that Steve built. I lusted after this boat which is a little crazy because: one, I don’t really like to paddle Greenland kayaks, and two, I already own so many. I just liked THIS ONE so much. I’m hoping to connect with Steve again to get some better photos for the website. So nice.
Moving on to my own design work, it’s tempting to say that I have just been too overwhelmed to actually DO any design work this year, but after fully admitting to spending an entire month fishing and another month rafting, I don’t suppose you’re going to empathize. I will say that I still have every intention of getting the 12 foot long, surfing-fishing-whitewater kayak out of my head and into production in the next couple of months. If you’re wondering what that might look like go find a picture on the internet of an old Necky Jive, and then supersize it in all directions and pretend it’s skin-on-frame. It should be something like that. Stable, surfy, manuverable, about 25lbs. I’ll keep you posted.
With everything that’s going on at the farm this should be an interesting year and I’m presently working to cultivate a state of calm that I hope I can muster when things get crazy. Lately I’ve been hiding out in southern Utah, taking deep breaths and getting ready to dive into the stressful yet wonderful frenzy of activity that the defines the growing and working months. Yet even here amidst overwhelming beauty, I can’t seem to escape from Proust’s observation, that even in the most sublime circumstances an unchecked inner world can overwhelm the outer one and cause us great unhappiness, as this story I wrote about our failed attempt on Egypt 3 slot canyon clearly illustrates. Despite it’s apparant futility, I do love the pursuit of material satisfaction. Enjoy the story, and sorry for the ridiculously long update, I’ll see ya when I see ya.
-Brian
